61 



On a previous page ^** he speaks of Ih. Carpenter «dont le fils 

 Herbert allait la même année étudier à Wlirzbourg, les Comatules 

 sous la direction du Professeur SempeKf. The above statements of 

 Perrier's can have only one meaning. He asserts that I went to Würz- 

 burg in order to work at the Comatulae under Professor Semper, 

 with the deliberate intention of attacking his work on Anteclon rosacea, 

 which was then two years old. 



I have only one reply to make to this charge which Perrier has 

 thought fit to bring against me, and that is to meet it with a direct, 

 absolute, and unqualified denial. His statement is absolutely and en- 

 tirely untrue. In this case, as in so many others, he has committed 

 himself to a generalisation which will not bear investigation. 



When I first went to Germany, nearly twelve years ago, it was 

 without the very slightest intention of taking up the Comatulae as a 

 subject of special study. I had not even read Perrier's memoir of 

 1873, and knew nothing about his criticisms of my fathers Avork. I 

 knew, as did most zoologists, that my father had accumulated a large 

 amount of unpublished observations on the anatomy of recent Crinoids, 

 and I was advised by those in whose judgement I had confidence to 

 take up some diiferent line of investigation from that to which he had 

 devoted himself. I therefore went to Würzburg in February 1875, with 

 the intention of commencing a research into the minute anatomy of 

 certain parts of the brain, which had been suggested to me by my 

 teachers at Cambridge as a promising field for investigation. When I 

 arrived at Würzburg, however, I found Professor Semper much oc- 

 cupied with the study of the development of the urogenital system in 

 the loAver Vertebrates and its relation to that of the Worms. He sug- 

 gested that I should abandon my proposed subject, and devote myself 

 instead to the minute anatomy of the genital glands in the Crayfish. To 

 this I agreed, and I spent some weeks cutting sections of the testis and 

 ovary of these animals, which I still have. In May, however, I returned 

 to England to accompany Sir George Nares's Arctic expedition as far 

 as Disco Island, for the purpose of assisting in the dredging operations 

 which were carried out there and in the North Atlantic by H. M- S.Val- 

 o ro us. Upon my return to England in September I found that a trans- 

 lation of Professor Semper's «Brief note upon the anatomy of Comatulae 

 had been just published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 

 together with an addendum by my father. Semper's observations had 

 been made on a new Comatula from the Philippines, my father's on An- 

 fcdon rosacea, and their results Avere somewhat divergent. As I was about 

 to return to Würzburg for the purpose of continuing my studies on the 



w Ibid. p. 91. 



